The World's Most Neglected Refugee Crisis: Cameroon

Imagine a country:

Over a million people have been uprooted from their homes and land; seven hundred thousand children cannot go to school because their schools have been bombed; hospitals are being destroyed.

With the influx of refugees from neighboring countries, the nation's already limited resources are being depleted.

But the world is silent. No one knows about this humanitarian crisis. For years, Cameroon has been bearing the burden of an unseen, unheard war.

The Norwegian Refugee Council's (NRC) 2024 report declared the world's most neglected refugee crisis is happening in Cameroon.

To date, the Central African country has consistently ranked near the top of the NRC's reports almost every year. It was first in 2018 and 2019, second in 2020, third in 2021, seventh in 2022, and second again in 2023.

Each year, it made the news for a few days. Then the world fell silent again, forgetting once more.

The Colonial Legacy: The Anglophone Crisis

Cameroon is one of the rare countries on the African continent to have been under the yoke of two different colonial powers simultaneously. France and Britain divided these lands according to their own interests, separating the local populations. Although the country's official language is French today, English is spoken in the southwestern regions.

In 1961, French Cameroon gained independence, while British Cameroon was split in two by a referendum: the north joined Nigeria, and the south joined French Cameroon. This artificial union laid the foundation for linguistic and cultural conflict.

The English-speaking minority began to feel excluded in areas such as education, the legal system, and political representation.

The central government insisted on keeping French as the sole official language nationwide. Courts, schools, and government institutions operated exclusively in French, meaning only French speakers were appointed to positions.

In 2016, teachers and lawyers in the country's English-speaking regions held protests. The government's harsh crackdown on these protests led some groups to launch an armed rebellion. In September 2017, the 'Anglophone War' began between separatist armed groups wanting to create a state called "Ambazonia" and the Cameroonian army.

The civilian population was caught between two fires. According to UN data, over 6,000 civilians have been quietly buried, and 600 villages burned. Amnesty International documented the army using a 'scorched-earth tactic' against separatist villages.

As with most problems in Africa, at the root of this issue lie the poisonous seeds planted by the colonial mindset. Peoples born in the same lands and sharing the same culture became enemies simply because they "spoke the language of different colonizers."

The effects of the war are still felt, and tensions persist in the south of the country.

Terror Attacks in the North: Boko Haram

In the north of Cameroon, a completely different threat prevails. The Nigeria-based radical group Boko Haram attacks villages, carries out bombings, and kidnaps civilians. Thousands who have lost their security are forced to leave their homes, becoming refugees. In northern Cameroon, refugees fleeing Nigeria and the local population are competing for the same resources.

In northern camps, nearly half of the babies born lack official identification, preventing them from accessing education and healthcare. Those living in these regions lead lives deprived of basic rights, under the shadow of both Boko Haram and state inadequacy.

The Burden from the East

Another crisis is unfolding in eastern Cameroon. The neighboring Central African Republic has been unstable for years due to non-state armed groups, ethnic militias, and political power struggles.

Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing conflicts in the Central African Republic, where the Russian mercenary Wagner Group is active, have sought safe haven in Cameroon. In recent years, the number of refugees coming to Cameroon from this country alone has exceeded 300,000. The country, already struggling with its own crises, is finding it difficult to bear this burden. Resources are limited, and this situation creates serious problems for both refugees and host communities. Displaced people without identification cannot access basic health and education services.

Conflicts around Lake Chad also continue to affect Cameroon's northern region.

A Crisis Condemned to Silence

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, as of 2024, over 1 million people are internally displaced within Cameroon. Another 80,000 have been forced to seek refuge in neighboring countries like Nigeria. In the Anglophone regions, over 700,000 children are deprived of education. Schools and hospitals are frequently targeted, and health services have collapsed. 2.5 million people are in need of urgent food assistance.

Yet, despite this dire picture, the world is almost completely silent.

Firstly, the Cameroonian government downplays the crisis. Media censorship and the inability of independent journalists to access the region make it nearly impossible to get news from inside. There is almost no political pressure from the international community.

The Media's Blind Spot

Although Cameroon is a country of strategic importance, it is condemned to 'instability,' particularly due to the economic interests of France and China. While the European Union allocated 27 million euros in humanitarian aid for Cameroon in 2024, the aid allocated to Ukraine exceeded 132 billion dollars.

The Cameroon crisis was the subject of only 28,800 articles in 2024, in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic combined. In contrast, the Ukraine crisis was reported on 451,000 times in the same year. This shows Cameroon received 15 times less coverage.

Other crises, such as the civil war in Sudan, coups in the Sahel, and conflicts in the DRC, manage to get more attention than Cameroon. Even the African press does not focus sufficiently on this crisis.

The people of Cameroon continue to suffer in silence on their own land. They can neither make it onto the international public agenda nor gain priority in humanitarian aid plans.

The most painful part is this: the less the crisis is discussed, the less it is known. The more the world's media reports on something, the more humanity sees it.

In Cameroon, people are now waiting not only for aid but also to be seen.

 

This article was originally published in Independent Türkçe, on June 5,2025.

https://www.indyturk.com/node/759719/t%C3%BCrki%CC%87yeden-sesler/d%C3%BCnyan%C4%B1n-en-fazla-ihmal-edilen-m%C3%BClteci-krizi-kamerun